


a rabbit as king of the ghosts

by De_Nugis



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-18
Updated: 2017-04-18
Packaged: 2018-10-20 15:45:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10665792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/De_Nugis/pseuds/De_Nugis
Summary: A tentative relationship in five easy magic acts.





	a rabbit as king of the ghosts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [themegalosaurus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/themegalosaurus/gifts).



> Title from Wallace Stevens.
> 
> For the prompt: "pulling a rabbit out of a hat," for the 2017 spnspringfling.

**pick a card, any card**

The _bleep_ must have been invading Max’s dreams for a while by the time he surfaces, because he wakes up outraged. There’s something big and warm in the bed next to him and that mitigates the insult the universe is perpetrating, but being _bleep_ ed awake is still an offense against humanity. 

Sam, that’s what the warm object is. Sam stayed tonight, instead of dressing and heading back towards his brother’s motel at midnight. That's a weird habit of Sam's, but this whole thing is new and Max tries not to judge. Anyway, tonight it’s good that Sam is here. There’s a reason Max and Alicia both like really tall men and now Max knows what that reason is. Sam can reach the smoke detector and Max can eviscerate it and they can go back to sleep. Or they can do better things, but not till that cursed contraption has got its battery guts torn out, because talk about mood killers.

Sam is sitting up. His chest is bare and his hair is all over the place and the cute/hot mixed signal would be doing things for Max if the smoke detector _bleep_ weren’t boring into his brain. Or the carbon monoxide detector, it could be that.

“Whu?” says Sam. 

“Smoke detector,” mumbles Max, and Sam’s out of bed, reaching for his jeans and pulling them on in a flat second.

“Go,” he says. “I’ll get Alicia.” As though it’s a hunt and Sam’s giving orders.

For one thing Alicia’s out tonight, and for another she’s Max’s sister, not Sam’s, and for a third … Max grabs Sam’s arm. Sam twists and breaks his grip.

“It’s the low battery warning. It’s only the battery. Trust me, I’ve burned toast. They make a lot more noise if they’re really going off. Don’t you have smoke detectors in your fancy bunker?”

But Sam doesn’t stand down from combat mode till they’ve found which one it is and Sam has reached it down and Max has taken the battery out and it’s finally quiet. Then Sam sits on the couch and runs his hands through his hair. Max wouldn’t mind doing that himself, but he doesn’t think Sam wants to be touched right this second. 

Max sits down, too. He’s wide awake now. He thinks about asking why that bunker’s not up to code — just because you’re warded against demons doesn’t mean you can’t die from a gas leak — but he and Sam aren’t really there yet.

“So, it’s three AM," he says instead. "We should have a 3 AM conversation.” Sam doesn’t answer, but at least now he’s not breathing like he’s panicked.

Favorite color is out; Max has seen Sam’s shirts. Hogwarts house is out because Sam probably hasn’t read Harry Potter. He reads nonfiction and he watches nature documentaries but he doesn’t seem to read fun things for fun.

“So, what did you want to be when you grew up? Apart from hunter.”

Sam looks wary, cornered, so that was probably a bad choice of gambit, but it’s 3 AM and it’s the best Max’s brain could do. Maybe he should go first.

“I wanted to be a tattoo artist,” he says. “I had notebooks full of complicated doodles. But then I kept doing research on them and I ended up studying sigils with this friend of my mom’s, which was rewarding in its way but not quite like being an artist with a funky storefront.”

Sam looks down at his hands. Max heard somewhere that Sam had been headed for law school at one point. 

“I, uh, I went through a magic phase,” he says, “when I was thirteen. Not real stuff, stage magic. You know, pick a card, any card. I thought it was neat.”

“Rabbits out of hats,” Max says, and Sam laughs. 

It’s a small, warm jolt, Sam telling him something, like reaching into a hat and coming up with a live rabbit. But Max can’t shake the feeling that Sam was … selecting. Sorting through responses like the question was a trick or a trap, choosing, rejecting. Pick a card, any card. Max wonders what cards Sam didn’t pick.

 

**vanishing act**

During Sam’s _pick a card, any card_ phase he’d been into trap doors and cabinets with secret compartments, all the stage machinery.

“So, what do you want to do?” says Max. He’s radiating post-hunt energy, like Dean does, but more relaxed, not the edgy pressure Sam’s used to. But he still wants Sam to come up with something.

It’s only about nine and they’re in the city. It makes sense Max would want to do something. Sam is supposed to have an idea. Like, for a date. Sex and hunting are both out. There isn’t a stopped sink or a busted ice machine or a hurt dog to deal with.

“Uh,” Sam says. Stalling.

When it comes to leisure activities, Sam usually gets his ideas from lies he tells Dean. Artsy French films, obscure history podcasts, that kind of stuff. He does do them later, for verisimilitude, and because it seems like doing them half-fixes the lie, and because once they’ve come out of his mouth they do sound like things that Sam would do. But Dean’s not here. Sam’s mind is a blank. Max is looking at him and Sam can’t think of a lie.

“We could, uh,” he says. 

The thing about living in a box is that it’s a lot easier if you learn how to be not there. There’s all kinds of ways. They do it with compartments and trap doors. But what if you don’t get back? If they open the box on the stage, big reveal, ta-da, in the flesh, but the box is empty because you forgot to unvanish?

It’s a habit. Vanishing is something Sam does around Dean. It’s not something Dean wants from him. Most of the things Sam does around Dean aren’t things Dean wants him to do. He just can’t break the habit. And then when he’s supposed to be back, in place, in the box, he can’t find the trap door. He’s bumbling around backstage like that scene in _Spinal Tap_.

Max is definitely disappointed by Sam’s performance, but he’s too polite an audience to show it. 

“How about dancing? Do you like dancing? There’s some great music round here,” he says, when it’s clear Sam’s not coming through.

“Dancing’s fine,” says Sam, though he hasn’t, since Jess. “Dancing would be great.”

And it is, actually. It’s not running or hunting or sex, but he’s moving and Max is moving and they’re in a crowd but it’s easy to breathe and for a while the box isn’t even there. 

 

**they do it with mirrors**

Given the white suit Sam’s double is wearing, there’s something extra appropriate about Sam stabbing it with a shard of mirror. Poetic fashion justice. 

Then there are only broken pieces on the floor. Sam’s cheekbone. An anonymous fragment of black shoe. No, Max’s shoe, Sam’s disco version had been wearing white loafers. A red rose. Max’s own eye, looking back at him. Max grinds it to powder with his heel. Sam is more methodical, pounding away with a crowbar.

“Are we done?” says Max eventually. Sam looks around and nods.

They get out of the building. Evil Warlock Guy considerately left one of those dense brown fiber doormats outside. Max wipes his feet and then wipes them again. He doesn’t want to carry home any slivers.

Then he bends over. This is only the third case he’s worked with Sam. Sex does factor into the equation, but that only complicates the question of when you can throw up in front of someone.

“You OK?” says Sam. “It, mirror you, it didn’t actually seem that bad.”

“I’m too charming to have a dark side.” Which is Max’s way of saying _I really like you, Sam, but fuck off._ Sam doesn’t get it.

“I get it,” he says. “A thing with your face, it can be bad.”

“You don’t get it. You’re not a twin.” 

It’s the deepest part of his wiring, that Alicia’s there. From when he was born. From before. Not him. Someone different, another person. The opposite of a mirror image. 

“I’ve, I mean, I know I’m not. But, I’ve, uh, got my share of sibling issues. And doppelgänger issues. If you want to talk.”

It’s not like he and Alicia are some saga hunters tell around the fire, like the Winchesters are, but she’s his sister and Max needs her to exist, to be Alicia. She’s his twin. Sam still doesn’t get it.

“Your hand is bleeding,” Max says. Mirror shards have their drawbacks as weapons. Hopefully Sam will accept the change of subject.

Sam probes his palm with his thumb.

“Lucifer,” he says, like it’s an explanation.

Sam’s alter ego with the suit. Oh. OK, that’s probably worse. But Max still doesn’t want to talk about it and Sam probably doesn’t either. 

They get into their separate cars like it’s something they’d agreed on.

 

It’s his mother Max wants to talk to. He drops by a couple of days later. She listens. 

When Max runs out of words she rummages in one of her baskets and gives him a bracelet, some kind of straw or grass with a faint spicy smell, woven in intricate, asymmetrical patterns.

“Keep it on,” she says. “Look out for it. Any reflections you run into won’t be wearing one.”

“Is that a mom thing or a witch thing?”

She doesn’t answer, just sorts through the basket again.

“You want one for your boyfriend?” she says.

“Yes, please,” says Max after a minute. Lucifer. That’s got to be creepy.

 

**sawn in half**

Dean had said _take the car_. There’s really no reason Sam couldn’t use one of the other cars for the weekend and leave Dean the Impala, but whatever Dean meant by the offer — an apology? a test? — Sam couldn’t very well say no. 

So the car is right there out the window. The motel curtains are crap; there’s a gap of, like, three inches where they don’t meet. The light over the room door bounces off the windshield and ends up on the ceiling over Sam’s head. A spy? a tether?

Max finishes fastening the bracelet thing he wants Sam to wear. It’s not like it’s a, a love token, a relationship thing. It’s a precaution, something it’s good to have if they hunt together again. But Max’s fingers holding his wrist and brushing his palm with its half-healed cut while he fiddles with the knot feel intimate, binding. 

“It fits,” says Max, “though I should have warned my mother that my boyfriend has really big … hands.” 

He turns Sam’s wrist over and kisses the skin under the knot where Sam’s pulse is beating fast, his other hand reaching for Sam’s dick. Sam arches up to meet him. Max’s mouth finds the other pulse at his throat.

Sam’s head tilts back. He feels the tickle of the bracelet at his wrist, watches the blurred bar of light on the ceiling. It looks like it’s shaking, but that’s probably just Sam, breathing hard, pushing up against Max’s body. The light is probably staying steady.

An acknowledgment? a reproach? a truce?

 

**rabbit from a hat**

“She lives in your room,” says Alicia.

“How is that fair?” says Max. “Maya is your friend. We’re adopting your friend’s rabbit. It’s now your rabbit. QED.”

“It’s not about fair,” says Alicia. “Look, you’re an exhibitionist. You know it, I know it, the world knows it. I don’t want some rabbit watching the proceedings when I hook up. You don’t mind. More like you’ll think it’s a chance to show off. Rabbit goes in your room. And people only ever say QED when they’re spouting bull.”

Max wonders sometimes if Alicia might have been a lawyer if she hadn’t chosen hunting. She and Sam could talk about it. Or not. If Sam ended up talking more about his life to Alicia than to him Max might be wildly jealous. Unlikely, it’s not really Max’s style, but a possibility.

“What if Sam doesn’t like the rabbit looking at us when we’re having sex?”

“Then we can renegotiate.”

Sam won’t mind, though. Max hasn’t known Sam that long, but he knows this won’t bother him. Sam will find the rabbit intriguing. 

 

Sam is reaching for the laptop before he even takes off the condom.

“Dude,” says Max, but Sam is already typing. Max takes the condom off Sam’s slackening cock, ties it, and disposes of it properly. This is not erotic. He gets back into bed. Sam leans against his shoulder. He’s still slick and hot with sweat. That’s a bit erotic. 

Max looks at the screen. He tries not to invade Sam’s privacy but the laptop’s right there. Also, Sam just skipped afterglow in favor of research and stuck Max with condom disposal.

Sam's already got multiple tabs. Rabbit care tips. Rabbit behavior. Rabbit lore.

The rabbit is nosing around on the floor. She’s a meticulous browser. Every now and then she’ll freeze, ears swiveling a careful half-turn, or stand up and sniff the air. She doesn’t seem scared, exactly, just cautious. She’s always gathering data. 

It reminds Max of the way Sam will go still for a moment, even in the middle of sex, if Max touches the bracelet, or the scar on his hand, or sometimes his chest. It reminds him of the way Sam sometimes vanishes, especially when he’s around Dean, like brown fur in dry grass or white fur against snow. It reminds him of how Sam goes through lore, attentive and assured and filtering. Sam’s a hunter, Sam’s dangerous, but it’s like, it’s like his intelligence is prey animal intelligence. Not a rabbit, though he does have an expressive nose. A hare, maybe. Hares are powerful magic.

Pulling a rabbit from a hat is one thing. It’s a classic. But the kind of magic Max does, the kind his mother taught him, that’s more about having the rabbit in your room, attuned to its own senses. 

“Hmmm?” says Sam.

“Nothing,” says Max. He goes on watching them both, Sam and the rabbit.


End file.
